The table is very seldom,if ever,properly cleaned,dirty cups and saucers lie about it,together with bits of bread,and if they have bloaters the bones and heads are left on the table,Sometimes there are pieces of onions mixed up with the rest.The floors are in a very much worse condition than the street pavements,and when they are supposed to clean them they do it with about a pint of dirty water.When they wash,which is rarely,for washing to them seems an unnecessary work,they do it in a quart or two of water,and sometimes boil the things in some old saucepan in which they cook their food.They do this simply because they have no larger vessel to wash in.The vermin fall off the walls and ceiling on you while you are standing in the rooms.
Some of the walls are covered with marks where they have killed them.
Many people in the summer sit on the door steps all night,the reason for this being,that their rooms are so close from the heat and so unendurable from the vermin that they prefer staying out in the cool night air.But as they cannot stay anywhere long without drinking,they send for beer from the neighbouring public--alas!never far away --and pass it from one doorway to another,the result being singing,shouting and fighting up till three and four o'clock in the morning."I could fill volumes with stories of the war against vermin,which is part of this campaign in the slums,but the subject is too revolting to those who are often indifferent to the agonies their fellow creatures suffer,so long as their sensitive ears are not shocked by the mention of so painful a subject.Here,for instance,is a sample of the kind of region in which the Slum Sisters spend themselves:
"In an apparently respectable street near Oxford street,the Officers where visiting one day when they saw a very dark staircase leading into a cellar,and thinking it possible that someone might be there they attempted to go down,and yet the staircase was so dark they thought it impossible for anyone to be there.However,they tried again and groped their way along in the dark for some time until at last they found the door and entered the room.At first they could not discern anything because of the darkness.But after they got used to it they saw a filthy room.There was no fire in the grate,but the fire-place was heaped up with ashes,an accumulation of several weeks at least.